Further up the valley, lights showed from a village of houses overhung by an escarpment, and sometimes the cries of lamentation were taken with the smoke and sent by the wind among the trees.
The bodies of the bears had been dragged into the middle of the compound and set on fire. The smell of burning belched into the rain; hair and skin and meat slowly burned back from paws and grinning skulls, revealing scorched bone.
They had killed thirty people. Another twelve were dying; fifteen more were maimed. Fewer than a hundred uninjured people had survived, the majority of whom were women and children. Forty-three able-bodied men were left. Not many wished to respond to Groden’s appeal for help. His wife had been taken: her dress had been found by the east gate.
A path led from the east gate, past the escarpment, rising south-eastwards into the forest. Tagart took it again two hours before dawn, having been back to dispose of the ramp. The path wound and climbed through the trees, here narrow and closely pressed by undergrowth, there open and wide and passing through woodlands of old beech where the death cap fungus grew. Over a dry gorge the path became a wooden bridge under which Tagart had hung with his flints and bow-drill, in the first hours of loneliness after he had been down to the village and watched them in the Meeting House. Concealed ropes led away into the brambles.
Other ropes lay in readiness elsewhere in the forest, other traps. Deadfalls, dug by the Cosks, had been cleared of debris and restored, the spikes made needle-sharp and coated with wolf’s-bane. Weights and counterweights waited high above the ground. Snares and loops, nooses and treadles and triggers: one was now fired by a badger, which leapt clear just as the whip of ropes ripping from the ground signalled the crashing fall of a water-filled skin, straight onto a spike of sharpened holly. The hummel-skin exploded in a drenching gush; the water flooded the ground and slowly drained away. The badger caught the reek of human scent on the crumpled skin and ran off the path into the deeper forest, where soon it was unearthing snails, the incident forgotten.
* * *
Dawn appeared in the east and the inside of the yew tree became less than black, a gloom in which vagueness could be discerned. Hernou watched the features of the young man taking form, and as she watched her suspicions grew stronger. This was no spirit. Would a spirit be wounded and cut about the arms, bruised and dirty? Would a spirit have asked such questions? And would a spirit talk in the accents of a savage?
In repose, his face seemed almost gentle. In the resolute line of his jaw and his high cheekbones she saw the nomad face, and in the blackness of his beard and glossy hair, and in the smooth texture of his skin, she saw the old complexion, found only in those village-dwellers whose blood was close to the native stock. She noticed his hands. They were scratched and torn, calloused and grimed: strong hands for gripping tools and weapons, for punching, for strangling.
Hernou was afraid. The savages were killers. It was the way they lived, by hunting and killing. They thought no more of blood and murder than did the farmers of soil and harvest. The harsh forest life streamlined their tribes and made them strong and ruthless, like the animals they sought for their prey. Their discipline, their life, were impossible to understand. For them to swim free in the seasons, not to have precise tasks for each week and day, but to wander the land by whim: this alone thrust the savages far beyond comprehension.
Even after all these generations, the farmers still felt themselves to be interlopers, foreigners. Their proper home lay across the sea. The only true natives were the savages.
Across his shoulders and the top of his chest she saw the form of bones and muscle, rising and falling as he slept. In the crook of an elbow she saw his sinews; his legs were relaxed, the great muscles at ease, and his feet, with their hard soles which had never known clogs, lay to the side. An old scar ran the length of his calf. At his belt was a pouch, and an empty sheath for blades. His main garment was a tunic of thick leather, its sleeves held by stitched thongs. The tunic was too small: it looked as if it had been made for another. Perhaps one who was now dead. Hernou thought of the things Groden had plundered from the camp. There had been several such tunics among them. The one this young man was wearing must have been overlooked, just as he himself must have been overlooked by those who Groden had said had gone round with axes, making certain.
Everything Hernou saw about him, everything she thought, hardened her conviction. This was no spirit.
He awoke with a blink, as if he had felt the touch of her eyes on his face. For a moment he said nothing, and Hernou’s heart hammered even more violently. She was helpless; she could not move. Her hands were bound behind her back, and her shoulders ached. The savage had tied her at ankles and wrists and lashed the bonds to the yew trunk.
He sat up and turned to one side, away from her. “Do you want something to eat? Water?”
When she did not reply he stopped busying himself among the provisions and looked back at her face. She nodded.
“If you wish to shit, tell me so. I do not want this place fouled.” He put a rib of venison before her. “Now I will free your hands to eat.” He went behind the yew trunk and untied the lashings; she rubbed each wrist in turn, soothing away the chafing and trying to bring back circulation.
“I beg you, free my ankles.”
“Why? Do you want to go outside?”
“My ankles hurt.”
He considered briefly, and did as she had asked. She gratefully massaged her ankles. She was naked under the skins he had provided; the skin covering her shoulder slipped, but she did not trouble to restore it. Hernou looked surreptitiously from under her brow. He was watching.
“Eat,” he said.
She diffidently picked up the raw venison. It smelled rank, but out of fear she tried to tear off a piece and chew. The taste made her gag. She felt her gorge rising, and for a moment thought she would be sick. The nomad was already swallowing; he caught her eye and seemed amused. He passed her a water-bag. She pulled out the wooden bung, and although the water was musty and stale she drank deeply, for her mouth was dry.
“Rain again,” he said, gesturing with his piece of meat at the forest outside, where water was dripping from the trees. “That is good. Good for me. Bad for them.”
“What does Tsoaul mean to do?” she said. The beating of her heart filled her head. She was near to panic, hysteria, but she knew she had to say something or it would be too late.
“Don’t worry. You will be safe. Do as I say and you will be safe.”
The skin covering her shoulder slipped further, revealing her breasts. She did not take her eyes from his face. The savage was watching her, no longer chewing, his eyes in shadow. She reached down and slowly took the leather in her fingers and pulled it aside. Her hand opened and let it fall. Inch by inch, she stretched out her arm to touch his hand with her own.
Still he did not move. Rain was dripping among the foliage outside. She felt her fingertips meet the warm skin of his hand.
He gave his head a dismissive shake and drew his hand away.
His voice came then, heavy with contempt. “Now I understand what they did to my wife.”
“I —”
“Get dressed. Tie back your hair.”
She did as she had been told; the savage tied her up again, more tightly than before, and between her wrists tied a longer piece of rope, so that she could be pulled along. He picked up three bows, and from the ground collected a number of things to go into his pouch.
“It is time to leave,” he said.
5
The search party filed through the east gate, passing over the spot where Hernou’s dress had been found, walking in pairs, armed with mattocks and axes and bows and spears. In front went Sturmer, beside him Ockom, a tall man dressed in dark skins. Morfe and Groden came last. As they left the protection of the palisade, those staying behind swung the gate back and dropped the bars into place. Fifteen men had been left to defend the village, too few, against Sturmer’s better judgement; but at
length he had given in to Groden’s persuasion. The village had lost enough people. They had to try to get Hernou back for this if no other reason. The search party, twenty-eight men, had been selected and armed and had set out at once, barely two hours after dawn.
Few of the men had not lost someone the previous night. Sturmer had been spared: his wife and children were safe, but some men had seen two or even three members of their family killed or maimed.
The path from the east gate – for surely that was the one Tsoaul had meant them to follow, just as he had laid signs to Gumis – was well known by all the villagers. They walked it regularly. It led generally south-east; after skirting the escarpment it rose by a series of swings into the forest. A thousand yards on, at the halfway point, it crossed a dry gorge by means of a cantilever bridge, built to save a long detour. The gorge walls, sheer and white where the chalk was exposed, or rubble-strewn and grown with rough brambles and shrubs, dropped to a fern-filled bottom. Beyond the gorge the path turned south, and then east, coming out by the sward-covered cliffs and sea, at the Shrine to Gauhm.
The men had come a long way into the woods by now, moving forward cautiously, stopping when Sturmer raised his hand. On either side the rugged trunks of oak and hornbeam were streaked with rain. Under the trees the light was bad.
The path turned once again to the left and opened out into a small clearing by the bridge over the gorge. Sturmer signalled a halt.
The gorge, which at some time had carried a stream down to the sea, was part of a long rift which gradually widened and formed the separation between two of the seven chalk cliffs, on the fifth of which stood the Shrine. The rift carried back into the forest for a mile north of the bridge. One of Sturmer’s predecessors had built the bridge, thirty feet wide, a long platform of oak logs buttressed into each side of the gorge with beams of oak and beech. Below it the gorge fell away sharply, thirty-five feet deep, its walls partly clad with the roots and twisted branches of stunted shrubs, growing badly in the subsoil. Brambles and tufts of fern grew among and across the chalk rubble at the bottom.
Sturmer turned to Ockom. “Do you think it’s safe to cross?”
The bigger man gave a fatalistic shrug, his eyes, normally humorous, now dull and flat. His brother had been mauled by the bears. Ockom was reckoned the best man in the village for fieldcraft. He knew the different animal tracks, the names of all the trees and plants that had names to know. He said, “There has been no sign of her this far. I see none now. I think it is safe. But send Groden across first – it’s his wife we’re risking ourselves for.”
Sturmer addressed Groden. “We fear an ambush. You cross first.”
Groden seemed reluctant, but ventured out across the clearing and onto the logs of the bridge, testing each step, with both hands gripping the rails. He looked over his shoulder.
“Nothing!”
“Cross to the far side!”
Groden did so, jumping the last three feet to solid ground. He dropped to his knees and as best he could inspected the timbers of the bridge, stood up, and waved the others on.
They crossed singly, Sturmer going last, standing by the lip of the gorge, vigilant for unusual sounds. There were none. The file reassembled on the far side and, still watching for tracks, Sturmer and Ockom led off.
Sturmer began to wonder whether they had taken the right direction from the village. They had merely assumed that Hernou had been taken along the Shrine path.
The ground, level for a quarter of a mile, now started sloping down into a shallow dry valley. There had been no evidence of activity anywhere along the path this far: the mud of the path was unmarked by footprints. As the search party descended into the valley, Sturmer’s doubts deepened. Perhaps Tsoaul had tricked them. Were they going the wrong way? Perhaps Hernou had been taken in an entirely different direction.
He turned to Ockom. “Do you see tracks?”
Ockom opened his mouth to speak but then Sturmer flinched as in a rush of wind he heard a loud bang and felt a spray of blood on his face. As Ockom’s two hands came up Sturmer could see the arrow where it had struck, in the sulcus of the upper lip, smashing through the front teeth and emerging at the back of his neck. Sturmer saw the grey goose quills, and all he could think was that these were not quail feathers, these were not like the fins on the arrow that Groden had shot into his dog Uli: these were goose quills, on a polished hazel shaft that had come from among the trees and passed a hand’s breadth from Sturmer’s face and turned Ockom’s head into a screaming mass of flesh and pain and teeth.
The next arrow hit the line of men further back, thudding into Holmer’s flanks even as Ockom, dead in his black tunic, went down.
The file broke loose. There was pandemonium. A third arrow slithered across the path and into the undergrowth. It had come from the left, and a little ahead. Sturmer marked the place and shouted to the others to follow.
They plunged into the forest, branches whipping at their faces, their weapons tangling as they ran. Ahead, Sturmer could see little: tree trunks, the branches above, the bushes of holly and hazel at eye level. There were no silhouettes against the sky, no archers hiding in the trees at the place he had marked.
On his right he heard a shriek. He turned in time to see Parn and Coyler, arms upraised, disappearing into the ground. They were out of sight, in a hole in the ground. Sturmer ran to their screams, to the edge of the pit.
They had fallen on serried wooden spikes, fifteen feet below ground level: Parn face-forward, so that he was partly spreadeagled, partly crushed against the earthen wall of the pit; and Coyler to one side, so that his face was upraised.
“Sturmer,” Coyler groaned, his features twisting with the realization of what was happening to his body. “Help me. Help me.”
Sturmer was joined by Boonis and Morfe. “Get them out! The spikes are poisoned! Get them out!”
“We’ve got no rope!”
“The poison! You can see the poison! Get them off the spikes!”
It was too late. Coyler’s face looking upward was a mask. His hands groped for help. His eyes filmed. Already his legs and waist felt dead. There were faces up there in the rectangle of light. Beyond them leaves and branches, trees. Rain coming in. Beside him Parn was still squirming. Coyler shut his eyes.
All but two of the search party were standing impotently at the edge of the deadfall. Sturmer barked an order: in the brambles nearby they found a long, stout branch. Boonis and Groden lowered it into the pit, and the bodies of the poisoned men were brought out and laid on the ground, among the briers and the wet leaves.
Tamben and Domack, who had run further into the woods, returned and joined the rest. They had seen and heard nothing of the mysterious bowman.
“It is Tsoaul!” cried Dopp. “He will kill us all!”
“He will do to us what he did to Gumis!”
“And Ockom!”
“And Coyler and Parn!”
“And the victims of the bears!”
Sturmer shouted angrily for silence. “Enough! Enough!”
“We’ll be killed!”
“Let’s go back to the village and get away while we can!”
“What if Tsoaul drew us here to keep us from the village while he attacks?”
“I’m going back!”
“No!” Groden screamed. “We must find Hernou!”
“You bastard! She can protect herself!” Dopp’s face was inches from Groden’s. “You and that slut brought this down on us – now she must fend the best she can!”
“What did you say?”
“She’s a whore! If she’s dead we’re well rid of her!”
Before Sturmer could intervene, Groden punched Dopp in the face. He staggered, and would have fallen into the pit had not Domack and Tamben caught him.
“Stop this!” Sturmer shouted. “We must think ahead!”
“The village is cursed!” said Munn. “I am taking my children away! The bears came and killed their mother and sister; Tsoaul shall
not have their father too!”
Several of the men seemed to be in agreement and were backing away.
“No!” said Sturmer.
“Stay and fight, cowards!” Morfe shouted.
“Scum!” Groden screamed. “Filth! Cowardly filth!”
“I am still Gauhm’s chosen one!” Sturmer shouted above all of them. “I am her priest! Any who leave us will have their ground blackened by Gauhm wherever it may be! You must fight for her if not for your own village!”
“We’ll take our chances with Gauhm!” Munn said. “She does not mean us to go through this!”
“He’s right!”
Morfe jumped forward with his axe. “Leave if you wish, but you must pass me first.”
For a moment it looked as if Munn and the others would attack Morfe, but they turned away. Morfe lowered his axe.
“Nothing can be done for these two,” Sturmer said, gesturing at Parn and Coyler. “We must go back to the path.”
“But we cannot fight Tsoaul! It is death to fight a spirit!”
“We are defenceless against him!”
“Back to the path.”
Sturmer did not know what to do. He considered returning to the village to fetch more men, and some of the women too. Was it wise? He did not know – but he had no other plan. A plan of sorts was better than no plan at all.
They came out on the path a few yards from Ockom’s body.
In rising terror Sturmer turned his head this way and that. He was a fool! A fool! He looked along the path, uphill and down, among the trees. Blandness: mud, rain, leaves, trunks, branches. Just woodland. Nothing else.
“Where is he?” Sturmer shouted. “Where is he? Where’s Holmer?”
Holmer, the wounded man, had disappeared.
The Stone Arrow Page 10